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MindMaze today announced closing a $100 million seed investment led by Hinduja Group which company says values them in excess of $1 billion.

MindMaze is creating what they call a “neural virtual reality platform,” an extension of products the company has created for the healthcare sector.

The company doesn’t specify other investors in the round, only noting participation from “other family offices,” in addition to Hinduja Group.

Stripping away the neuro-buzzwords, MindMaze seems to want to create a VR system that has a clearer overall picture of the user at the center of the experience, using a number of a different input systems from motion tracking and brain activity to accomplish that goal.

The company currently shows a VR headset concept and tracking camera on their website claiming 6DOF head tracking, 120Hz hand and finger tracking, and AR capabilities.

Last year when the company locked down their first investment of $8.5 million we learned they had planned to create their own headset called MindLeap, but the latest info from the company surrounding their new investment makes no mention of MindLeap. It sounds as if the company plans to use the investment to expand their healthcare activities while continuing R&D and licensing the technology outside of the healthcare sector.

“The first-of-its-kind multisensory technology has already been commercialized for stroke and brain-injury survivors and Its current regulatory approvals enable the company to accelerate placement of devices in Europe and Asia. The MindMaze platform will become more broadly available through licensing in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer spaces to power virtual reality-optimized products for mainstream experiences beyond gaming,” reads the press release.

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This article BEGS for more investigation. This sounds like a scam company whose fleecing investors. I’ve messed around with a few consumer brain sensors, and they, at most, can tell you if you’re irritated. Even the best medical ones only read vague, general areas. They do NOT put vision or sound into your head. This is not going to plug you into the Matrix, or Sword Art Online. Well there isn’t much to go on, I seriously doubt they are going to outdo John Carmack when it comes to tech, or the several years head start in VR both Valve and Oculus have. This whole thing sounds like fantasy to steal other people’s money with pie-in-the-sky promises.

DonGateley

So you’ve been in their labs?

Anon

I’m also skeptical about the way they’re using neuro buzzwords, sounds like an attempt at bamboozling. At best it seems they have a headset with EKG sensing and a camera that does some skeletal tracking. EKG however doesn’t get you nearly as close to the sort of thought-control they are edging toward. So far I’ve seen no clearly tangible benefits of what MindMaze is promoting compared to what else is out there.

I can’t imagine investors throwing around this sort of money without doing their due diligence though, so this might be a case of the investors really investing in the proven healthcare applications while the VR stuff is being fronted by the company to make it seem really innovative even if it’s only a small portion of what they’re really doing.

My first instinct as well. It does seem like the EEG(not EKG in this case), could be used as a simple buzzword quite easily, and I’m not quite sure what their application is in this case, but MindMaze does seem to have some experience with practical employment of the technology, and the $100 million investment comes off the back of a $1 billion evaluation, so we can assume somebody has at least attempted due diligence. TechCrunch shortly into their article finds a place to specifically address this concern:

“This is not vaporware. MindMaze has devices — which include both wearables and training software that taps into working on rebooting damaged parts of the brain — already deployed in several top university hospitals across Europe and elsewhere”. As well, per Forbes: “The company has certification as medical device in Europe and is currently working on getting approval as a medical device in the US through the Food & Drug Administration”. So, some of their technology is in the wild and has found some pickup in the medical community at least, generally with stroke patients it seems. It’s a little difficult to glean how this will inform a VR experience, but Fortune goes into a little bit more detail on the front:

“The system combines self-teaching artificial intelligence with computer vision in a way that can be customized to the patient’s needs and provide real-time multisensory feedback on the patient’s progress or lack thereof”. An article from Bloomberg last May notes that in a “20-person clinical trial, patients using the equipment two and a half hours a day for three weeks improved their motor function by as much as 35 percent”. It’s not cheap stuff either; $80,000 to purchase, or $2,500/month for rent – these are numbers that certainly would cause some consideration on the part of buyers before purchase – not to say that people haven’t been swindled before. It wasn’t too long ago that VR itself was widely considered in this light. Definitely something to keep an eye on it would seem, in any case; if their approach proves out, the final pieces for the Magic Leap and mobile VR in general may be in place.

Exactly. There’s still a lot of people who think VR is about a direct connection to the brain and nothing else is important until we can achieve that. Those people have obviously never worked on a real tech product and don’t realize that the goal of that kind of product is not even clearly defined and the tech could be 100 years away or more. ECG mood detection is a cute gimmick and probably has some applications but is nowhere near as important as the current wave of VR.